Oops, I Did It Again

If you’ve glanced at this blog anytime during this week, you may have noticed that its appearance seemed…

Another Sign of the Recession

I don’t talk about finances often, but something happened today to make me think the recession is not…

Me and Mike Dell’s Company

Seems that the last couple of posts have  been about my victories over technology, and this one won’t be much different.

A couple of weeks ago, I started having problems with the Dell XPS 630i I bought in December 2008.  It’s a great machine and I really love this box. The problem was that the darn thing wouldn’t come on.  That is, it wouldn’t POST and when it did finally come on, after multiple attempts to turn it on, it would think it was January 1, 2007 requiring me to change the date in the BIOS.  I called Dell and because the system is under warranty (with next day service), they sent a technician, Sean (who was about to become my new best friend), out the following day to change the motherboard.  A few days later, I started having the same problem again, which caused me to think that perhaps the problem was related to the computer’s power supply.  So I called Dell, said that I thought the problem was related to the power supply, but the customer service rep in India wouldn’t listen and the next day he sent a technician (Sean) out to replace the motherboard. Again, the system operated okay for about two days and then the problem returned.

A Not Quite Bedtime Story…

Well, my children, it is time for a bedtime story.  Let me tell you a tale of a man responsible for a computer network consisting of four machines, three printers and other small odds and ends.  One of the machines is a server, two machines are desktops and the last machine is a laptop.  The laptop is used primarily by my Most Significant Other.  Now, let me be honest.  The laptop started out as my machine, but somehow over the last 18 months I’ve lost control of it and despite my protest, she doesn’t consider it mine anymore.

 

I’m Just a Teenager with a Lot of Money…

This was my weekend to fend off the tech challenges I’d been avoiding for almost a week. And as Stewie of “Family Guy” would say, “Victory was mine.”

 

– Installed Service Pack 2 for Office 2007. First of all, it weights in at over 300 megs (and no, that was not a typo. It was 300 megs). Second of all, I love it. Outlook and Word load and close noticeably faster. Without broadband, I wouldn’t even consider downloading this important update.

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– Some will call me lazy, but I have always opted for the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser vice using a third party browser.  Yes, I know I could use something else, but there really is no compelling reason for me to switch. Having said that, I installed the new MS IE8 on all of my machines except the server late last week.  Friday, the server notified me via a red icon on my desktop that it had an important update for me to install. I said “do it” and the server installed what turned out to be the IE8 update for 2003 server. No biggie, right? Wrong! Turns out IE8 broke one of my best server add-ins, Advance Admin Console (AAC).

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